Yahoo! has invited fledgling filmmakers to submit 12-second video advertisements to promote the website’s new look. Grand-prize for best short: two thumbs up, credit for a job well done, and a place among the featured videos.
So what happened? Did the Yahoo! ad budget get cut? Did the creative team drop the ball? Hmmm. Maybe not: users submit commercials, paid in pride and bragging rights, while we save a boatload in the usual campaign costs. Brilliant! Get me a proposal for the CEO immediately!
Yahoo! began the promotion of its redesign by partnering with renowned film schools. Students were given the running guide of personal possessives and pubescent innuendo: “Our Yahoo! is changing. Your Yahoo! is changing.”
Well, maybe the film students just took it as innuendo as the spots may indicate. Or perhaps my filthy mind has translated “you were at your office playing with your Yahoo!” (good job Colin Montgomery from Yale Film School! I hope you get paid for something some day) or uncomfortable schoolmarms commenting on how nature changes our Yahoo!s (nice one, Raymond Zablocki from Parsons School of Design!) to have something to do with, you know, “stuff.”
The invitation to discuss how your Yahoo! has changed (eww) is extended to the general user as well. Promos can be submitted at the company’s video vertical. Yahoo! says user-submitted videos are a good example of the Yahoo!er’s spirit.
“This campaign celebrates the creative contributions of the Yahoo! community and truly exemplifies the spirit and consumer focus of our Yahoo! brand,” said Cammie Dunaway, chief marketing officer at Yahoo! Inc. “Today’s Internet users are passionate about expressing themselves and contributing to the online conversation.”
Yahoo! and its agency, Soho Square / OgilvyOne, invited film students from the London Film Academy, Parsons The New School of Design, the San Francisco Art Institute and Yale University. The best submissions will be featured in the company’s ongoing advertising on the Yahoo! network.
The company is perhaps taking more control than General Motors did earlier this year when it launched a user-generated promotional campaign. David Utter reported in April about the slew of GM-sponsored anti-SUV ads that went “zipping” around the Internet.
Yahoo! says as long as copyright and decency standards aren’t violated, it’s fair game. They didn’t say anything about Google activists who can’t keep their Yahoo!s to themselves. So, we’ll see.
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